On a day that the USA remembers terrorist acts, it's also useful to also remember what is going on in the world in some of our most impoverished areas of the world, where non-profits, NGOs hope to make a difference.

Bangladesh has revoked licences for more than 6,000 charities over the last three years, an official said Tuesday, in a policy that critics slammed as a government attempt to extend its powers.

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"The government increasingly acts as though it is interested in controlling the NGO sector to a minute level detail, which will only stifle civil society activity."

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Masud Rana, spokesman for the social services department, said the licences for non-government organisations (NGOs) were withdrawn after charities were found to have collapsed or have changed their area of work.

"Most of these NGOs were sitting idle doing nothing or doing things other than they were permitted," Rana told AFP.

But the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) group said the closures were a deliberate move by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government.

"This is just a smoke screen to exert political control over civil society," said Brad Adams, Asia director at the HRW.

"The government increasingly acts as though it is interested in controlling the NGO sector to a minute level detail, which will only stifle civil society activity."

This is a very terrible act to cancel all these charitable institutions. Politics is in the air again, controlling the lives of people. It is bad enough that we have war in these districts, but what is worst is the fact that they all seem not to care for the those who have least in life.

New research confirms what they say about nice guys...[or at least the result is a lot more nuanced that it seems.

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Givers dominate not only the top of the success ladder but the bottom, too, precisely because they risk exploitation by takers.

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Excerpted:

We have some well-worn aphorisms…courtesy of Machiavelli (“It is far better to be feared than loved”), Dale Carnegie (“Begin with praise and honest appreciation”), and Leo Durocher (who may or may not have actually said “Nice guys finish last”). More recently, books like The Power of Nice and The Upside of Your Dark Side have continued in the same vein: long on certainty, short on proof.

So it was a breath of fresh air when, in 2013, there appeared a book that brought data into the debate. The author, Adam Grant, is a 33-year-old Wharton professor, and his best-selling book, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, offers evidence that “givers”—people who share their time, contacts, or know-how without expectation of payback—dominate the top of their fields. “This pattern holds up across the board,” Grant wrote—from engineers in California to salespeople in North Carolina to medical students in Belgium. …[T]he book appears to have swung the tide of business opinion toward the happier, nice-guys-finish-first scenario.

And yet suspicions …remain—fueled, in part, by …Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson. …Since Steve Jobs was published in 2011, “I think I’ve had 10 conversations where CEOs have looked at me and said, ‘Don’t you think I should be more of an asshole?’” says Robert Sutton, a professor of management at Stanford, whose book, The No Asshole Rule, nonetheless includes a chapter titled “The Virtues of Assholes.”

In Grant’s framework, the mentor in this story would be classified as a “taker,” which brings us to a major complexity in his findings. Givers dominate not only the top of the success ladder but the bottom, too, precisely because they risk exploitation by takers. It’s a nuance that’s often lost in the book’s popular rendering.

…[M]anagement professor Donald Hambrick, of Penn State [knows] academic psychology’s definition of narcissism—a trait Hambrick measured in CEOs and then plotted against the performance of their companies, in a 2007 study with Arijit Chatterjee.

…Hambrick…chose a set of indirect measures: the prominence of each CEO’s picture in the company’s annual report; the size of the CEO’s paycheck compared with that of the next-highest-paid person in the company; the frequency with which the CEO’s name appeared in company press releases. Lastly, he looked at the CEO’s use of pronouns in press interviews, comparing the frequency of the first-person plural with that of the first-person singular. Then he rolled all the results into a single narcissism indicator.

How did the narcissists fare? Hambrick …ound that the narcissists were like Grant’s givers: they clustered near both extremes of the success spectrum.

The humility and selflessness of Collin's Level 5 leadership, as well as Professor Adam Grant's important work on Givers, Takers and Matchers shows a nuance about timing and intensity. It seems giving can include a goodly portion of challenge and dominance, among the expectation of the group surveyed. Collins describes Level 5 leaders as those in whom genuine personal humility blends with intense professional will. Perhaps intensity is a key description for those leaders.

NOTE that:

..."In at least three situations, a touch of jerkiness can be helpful.

1) ...if your job, or [an] element of it, involves a series of onetime encounters in which reputational blowback has minimal effect.

2) The second is in that evanescent moment [when] group has formed but its hierarchy has not.

Finally

[3 The third—not fully explored here, but worth mentioning—is when the group’s survival is in question, speed is essential, and a paralyzing existential doubt is in the air."

This is a really good article. I am not sure what does work best. But you are who you are. You are a jerk or you are a nice guy or girl but you can learn the competencies that will make you and your company successful if you tend to have nicer tendencies.

What I took away at the end of the article is you need these qualities to be a great leader:

ConfidenceCompetenceExpertiseInitiativePassionVision

If you want people to follow you - you need to show people you care about success. People want to follow a winner.

You do not need to be a Jerk or Narcissist to get results but you need to be tough, direct and challenge people when it is appropriate to get results. Then appreciate them and give them Kudos when they do well. You then will develop shared behaviours that will make the whole company successful. Disagreeable Givers is a great term and worth striving for.

My favourite part was the Steve Jobs argument. He was a jerk and a narcissist and built a great company we all admire. But his Jerk tendencies got him fired and it was his kinder gentler self after he reflected on things in his exile that lead to his ultimate success on his return. He was a better leader when he came back. A little less of a total jerk and he actually did praise when appropriate and gave credit where credit was due. But he still pushed people relentlessly and they respected him for that because of the spill over effect. By him doing well, the whole team and company did well. He had the above qualities.

If he was the only one that did well - seeking money, prestige and acclaim - he would have been exiled again and the Apple would have failed. Hard to even imagine. But the question you have to ask - was his jerk behaviour the reason for the success or was Appel and Jobs successful despite his narcissistic tendencies? Hmmmm?

There are wartime CEO's and Peace time CEO's and they need to act differently to be successful based on the circumstances. Steve jobs was a very good wartime CEO.

But follow the rules of engagement and you will be successful all the time.

Contreras-Sweet is working to transform the SBA from a bureaucratic agency criticized for confusing loan programs into a modern, nimble resource for American entrepreneurs.

________________________“I was the blind leading myself through....I wish that I understood that I had counselors available to me.” Maria Contreras-Sweet, head of the U.S. Small Business Administration

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Contreras-Sweet:

Came to the U.S. from Guadalajara, Mexico, at age 5

Rose through the corporate ranks at the 7UP/RC Bottling Co. to become a vice president

Helped found Hispanas Organized for Political Equality, a non-profit promoting political and economic opportunities for Latinas

Became the first Latina in a California state cabinet position as secretary of business, transportation and housing in 1999

Founded of Contreras Sweet Enterprises, a consulting company

Founded Fortius Holdings LLC, a venture capital firm, and

Founded ProAmerica Bank

Her work in the SBA

Since taking office in April 2014, Contreras-Sweet has:

Focused on improving small-business owners’ access to capital — one of the primary challenges entrepreneurs face

Extended a pre-existing policy that eliminates fees for SBA-guaranteed loans of $150,000 or less

Introduced LINC, an online matchmaking tool that pledges to connect businesses with SBA lenders within 48 hours, as well as SBA One, an automated lending platform that will roll out later in 2015. LINC and SBA One aim to increase the total number of SBA-guaranteed loans by making lenders easier to access and loan processing more efficient.

Contreras-Sweet says many businesses fail because they don’t get counseling. ....much of her knowledge was built through trial and error as she started her own businesses. ....“I was the blind leading myself through this process,” she says. “I wish that I understood that I had counselors available to me.”

Related posts by Deb on Entrepreneurs, Leadership and Women in Business:

It's takes long hours, and a network (a village) to be a successful small business owner. This successful business entrepreneur, leader, immigrant, mother and Latina provides a perspective on the important of resources at all levels to support business success, including the support of her family. ~ D

With nine FIFA executives under arrest, the organization that manages the World Cup [is] a poster child for governance gone wrong.

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Sepp Blatter is ...expected to win re-election, ...though a hairless bear would do less damage as president.”

~ by Satirist John Oliver. HBO's Last Week Tonight, this segment received 10 million YouTube views

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A brief synopsis of the 5 leadership lessons:

1. A HISTORY OF ETHICAL LAPSESA pair of World Cups—planned for Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022— have allegations of bribery tied to the bidding process for each event.

2. RESISTANCE TO TRANSPARENCYOn occasions when corruption charges were investigated, FIFA worked to avoid public reporting and chose not to release reports in their original forms.

3. DEEP CULTURAL PROBLEMSIn one example, Michael J. Garcia, a former U.S. attorney for New York’s Southern District, claimed that a colleague on the Ethics Committee, Hans-Joachim Eckert, had misrepresented his report in a summary Eckert wrote that effectively cleared the way for the World Cups in Qatar and Russia to proceed.

4. FAILURE TO CHANGETwo outside organizations produced change reports in 2011 and 2012, offering dozens of suggestions as to how to FIFA could solve its governance problems. However, few of these ideas have been implemented.

5. LACK OF PUBLIC SUPPORT“The crazy thing is, Sepp Blatter is widely expected to win re-election, [and he did] even though a hairless bear would do less damage as president,” satirist John Oliver said on his HBO program, Last Week Tonight, in a segment that has received more than 10 million views on YouTube.

As with all ScoopIt articles, click on the title or photo to see the full, original article.

The president of FIFA has now resigned, after running for reelection in spite of the negative press and widely reported problems that happened during his leadership. Do these 5 leadership problems resonate with what you know to be true about FIFA?

Is it time to elect the hairless bear? (See item 5 in the synopsis.) ~ Deb

“…With the problems [it] faces, and with a recently reelected leader who seems unable to accept responsibility, is FIFA…worth being saved?”

...the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed its 47-count indictment against those individuals has focused on how FIFA’s governance structure—which gives its 209 member-nations and each one’s soccer association equal voting rights—made it susceptible to widespread wrongdoing.

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…change, for FIFA, has more to do with accountability and culture …[What are] the shared set of values that [transcend] all of those cultural differences?” ~ Jean Frankel_________________________________

So with all of the problems it faces, and with a recently reelected leader who seems unable to accept responsibility, is FIFA an organization capable of, or even worth, being saved?

“Organizations like these do have a place, and they’re essential in the grand scheme of things,” she said. “World football is the biggest sport on earth, so you need a governing body of this large sport. You need somebody to set the rules, promote the sport, and do all of those positive things.”

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Here’s an organization that represents more than 200 different countries, which means more than 200 different cultures. _________________________________

Frankel, who recently helped the NCAA navigate a massive governance overhaul, said she sees a number of similarities between the two organizations.

“People asked that question of the NCAA: Do we need them? Can’t the [collegiate athletics] conferences just govern themselves?” she said. “Of course, the answer to that was ‘no.’ The conferences can’t govern themselves, because you need to have one place where a consensus has to be reached, where governance and oversight can happen.”

A fix for FIFA could even borrow from the model the NCAA ultimately landed on, said Frankel, which included weighted voting.

“It worked for the NCAA, because it was the closest thing that you could have to some kind of level playing field,” she said. “Large conferences in the NCAA and large countries in the soccer world have more resources and more to gain and lose.”

....But change, for FIFA, has more to do with accountability and culture than anything, explained Frankel. ....Here’s an organization that represents more than 200 different countries, which means more than 200 different cultures.

Jean's comments indicate a positive organizational scholarship informed vision of change, how deeply flawed organizations can use their flaws as a pivot point to get back on the straight and narrow. The article, available in full here,highlights what worked for the NCAA in turning their organization around.

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Tensions ran high enough that the largest schools began to consider the possibility of breaking away to form their own organization.

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Excerpt: Think it’s hard for your board to work effectively? Try doing so while under constant scrutiny from the public and media—and even congress. That’s exactly what the NCAA, college sports’ governing body, faced as it restructured its governance model..

I believe this could be either a great example of large scale system positive change or of failure. This is based on knowing the NCAA story of how governance can be fixed, of how to lead change based in what's NOT working, how how those exact dysfunctional aspects of an organization can be the basis for renewal and rebirth, of being made new again. Full disclosure, I've joined the Ideas for Action groupthis spring, because of Jean and because of the bench strength of the organization.

It’s really hard to talk about failure. The "Admitting Failure" website, connected to engineering failure stories at its creation, hopes to change that.

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...acknowledging failure is often a catalyst for innovation... _____________________

It is painful for civil society organizations to acknowledge when we don’t meet our goals and objectives... The paradox is that we do everything we can to avoid these pains even though we all know failure is the best teacher and we have to be open and talk about our failures in order to learn. ....acknowledging failure is often a catalyst for innovation that takes our work from good to great.

To address this conundrum we need a paradigm shift in how civil society views failure. We think this starts with open and honest dialogue about what is working and what isn’t so Admitting Failure exists to support and encourage organizations to (not surprisingly) admit failure.

ad·mit /ədˈmit/verb:1. To concede as true or valid <admit responsibility for a failure>2. To allow entry <admit failure into the organization, allowing a safe space for dialogue>

No more. Failure is strength. The most effective and innovative organizations are those that are willing to speak openly about their failures because the only truly “bad” failure is one that’s repeated.Related posts by Deb on Learning and Failure:

"To begin again, this time more intelligently" is exactly why embracing failure is important to building high performing teams and to high performance cultures that truly support learning, adaptation and change. For that reason, this innovative website is referenced on several websites, including an Oprah.com blog post about "What to Do When You're Feeling Defeated."

Engineers Without Borders (EWB) set up this website to encourage aid workers to share their mistakes—and to kickstart future success, and then some.

After allowing for the process of accepting defeat, realize defeat and crisis can transform us, renew us, and provide a different perspective. I may be the transformative feedback we need and have been missing.

Topic: Curiosity and enjoyment as moderating factors in socio-cultural evolution

He mentioned this quote early in his presentation and cites it often in his presentations in general:

“To establish a place of work where engineers can feel the joy of technological innovation, be aware of their mission to society, and work to their heart’s content.” ~ Masaru Ibuka, Sony founder electronics inventor Masaru Ibuka, in explaining the purpose of incorporation of Sony

Quotes I found relevant after hearing his presentation:

“Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person's skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically rewarding.” ― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act.”

“the self expands through acts of self forgetfulness.”

“...It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.” ― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

His presentation was, in many ways, traditional, academic, with the customary rows of seated listeners. Yet his later slides reflect the opening up of the big principles core learning of what flow is and how people from all walks of life, with less regard for wealth, achieve it through choice, even with varying degrees of freedom available to themselves.

One person who talked of the presentation said he could have sat there listening for hours.

Web research on Flow also brings flow explorers to topics like human chemistry and human thermodynamics, as well as to the broader field of positive psychology. It is a long way from industrial age, mechanistic thinking of the 20th century. I cannot help but be inspired by it to learn more and find more ways of applying it in my own life and work. ~ Deb

If the governments of Costa Rica and El Salvador can resist the mining industry, maybe we all can, but not without a fight: Mining firms are suing governments for policies that impeded future profits.

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.....global mining companies are trying to ensure that no government is allowed to say no.______________________

One is the tiny nation of El Salvador, where the government stopped issuing gold mining permits half a decade ago. The Salvadoran government did so despite sky-high gold prices and the argument that exporting gold was one of the country's few chances to boost aggregate economic growth (in the short-term, at least).

They did so largely because the majority of Salvadorans get water from one large river system, and gold mining invariably pollutes nearby rivers and watersheds. ...El Salvador is not alone in its policies. The government of Costa Rica has said no to open-pit mining. (While open-pit mining is only one method of mining, it is among the most environmentally destructive.)

Costa Rica's Congress subsequently voted for a no-new-open-pit-mining law—unanimously. That no was upheld by Costa Rica's Supreme Court.

Governments can say no to a false notion of development that would do little besides line the pockets of elite corporate interests, while leaving devastated ecosystems in its wake. ....But global mining companies are trying to ensure that no government is allowed to say no.

These corporations are making their cases based on a controversial Central America "free trade" agreement with the United States, and on El Salvador's former investment law (written with the help of the World Bank), which opened the door for mining firms to sue governments for policies that impeded future profits.

In February 2014, Infinito announced that, rather than accept the Supreme Court rejection of its appeal, it was filing an investor-state case against the Costa Rican government at the World Bank's ICSID. Infinito is suing Costa Rica for the $94 million it claims to have invested so far.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

This is a cautionary tale of profiteering and corporatism at the global level. The author suggests wesupport the right of governments to say no to rapacious mining. It may be there are many other type of global actions that can destroy the environment in other nations when putting profits above people. Just passing along this awareness can make a difference. ~ Deb

Does a 40+ hours a week actually work for today's and tomorrow's world? Consider what would happen if we had a 20+ hour work week as the new standard?

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Society seems to be in denial over this... ~ Brian Dean

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Excerpted:

U.K.-based writer Brian Dean argues that we need to reframe the idea of work itself—and maybe replace it with "antiwork" instead. He explains:

"Antiwork is a moral alternative to the obsession with "jobs" that has plagued our society for too long. It’s a project to radically reframe work and leisure. It’s also a cognitive antidote to the pernicious culture of "hard work," which has taken over our minds as well as our precious time."

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"The global economic collapse wasn’t caused by human idleness, and neither were the previous recessions."

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Twenty years ago, Jeremy Rifkin estimated that about 75% of jobs in industrialized countries included tasks that could be at least partially automated, and as artificial intelligence and engineering improves, that number keeps getting higher.

"Society seems to be in denial over this, to a large extent," Dean says.

"So, we see the persistent belief that we can achieve 'full employment.' Rifkin showed empirically that this is nonsense, unless we create a lot of make-work, i.e., work for the sake of working. And that’s what, as a society, we seem to be doing. Everywhere you look there are stupid, pointless (and probably environmentally destructive) jobs."

If we don't work, how will we pay rent? Dean supports the idea of unconditional basic income—a system in which society pays everyone enough to meet basic needs, so we can all spend our time doing something that truly fulfills us.

So the 20-30 hour work week rises again. Frithjof Bergman, at the University of Michigan, suggested it for society decades ago. Perhaps now with the pain of income disparity, the speed of technological advances including communication, it can be taken more seriously.

Excerpted from the interview referenced below:

Frithjof: New Work represents the effort to redirect the use of technology so that it isn’t used simply to speed up the work and in the process ruin the world – turning rivers into sewers and rain into acid.

The purpose of technology should be to reduce the oppressive, spirit-breaking, dementing power of work – to use machines to do the work that is boring and repetitive. Then human beings can do the creative, imaginative, uplifting work.

So New Work is simply the attempt to allow people, for at least some of their time, to do something they passionately want to do, something they deeply believe in. ~ Deb

An evidence-based mindset on the state of the world would bring many benefits. It would calibrate our national and international responses to the magnitude of the dangers that face us. It would limit the influence of terrorists, school shooters, decapitation cinematographers, and other violence impresarios.

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…To read significance into these clusters [ of violence...of the past year] is to succumb to primitive thinking...and cosmic conspiracies.

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News is about things that happen, not things that don’t happen. We never see a reporter saying to the camera, “Here we are, live from a country where a war has not broken out”—or a city that has not been bombed, or a school that has not been shot up.

…To read significance into these clusters [ of violence, “annexations, beheadings, [and] pestilence” of the past year] is to succumb to primitive thinking, a world of evil eyes and cosmic conspiracies.

…in most years bee stings, deer collisions, ignition of nightwear, and other mundane accidents kill more Americans than terrorist attacks. …

…The Great American Crime Decline of the 1990s, …resumed in 2006, and, defying the conventional wisdom that hard times lead to violence, proceeded right through the recession of 2008 and up to the present.

…the trend appears to be downward, from 7.1 homicides per 100,000 people in 2003 to 6.2 in 2012.

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…2013 saw the signing of six peace agreements, two more than in the previous year.

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…a heightened concern about violence against women is not futile moralizing but has brought about measurable progress—and that continuing this concern can lead to greater progress still.

…the number of interstate wars has plummeted since 1945, and the most destructive kind of war, in which great powers or developed states fight each other, has vanished altogether. (The last one was the Korean War).

…2013 saw the signing of six peace agreements, two more than in the previous year.

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[However]…The number of wars jumped from four in 2010...to seven in 2013.

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[However]…The number of wars jumped from four in 2010—the lowest total since the end of World War II—to seven in 2013. These wars were fought in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan, and Syria. …The worldwide rate of battle deaths (available through 2013) has also risen since its low point in 2005, mostly because of the deaths in the Syrian civil war. …It has undone the progress of the last dozen years, but the rates of violence are still well below those of the 1990s, and nowhere near the levels of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s.

…The world is not falling apart. The kinds of violence to which most people are vulnerable—homicide, rape, battering, child abuse—have been in steady decline in most of the world. Autocracy is giving way to democracy. Wars between states—by far the most destructive of all conflicts—are all but obsolete.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

Many crime and war trend lines are declining, except for the number of wars, which have started to rise in certain countries including battle deaths in areas like Syria.

The quote about watching trendlines, not newslines, and memes with their emotionalism, is well taken to guide us in avoiding alarmist thinking, and planning wisely, as Steven Pinker relates from his experience as the author of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, and Andrew Mack, director of the Human Security Report Project at Simon Fraser University. ~ D

Chipotle has distinguished itself from the Burger Kings and McDonald's of this world by relying on "naturally raised" meat that is antibiotic- and hormone-free, by dropping trans fats from its cooking before doing so was in vogue, and by offering organically certified beans and avocados. ...Other chains reheat frozen items in a mechanized system. At Chipotle, Ells points out, "we're actually cooking. If you walk into the refrigerator, you'll see fresh onions and peppers and raw meat that isn't tenderized or treated in any way."

Excerpted: That mission drives Chipotle's sales and marketing.. When Chipotle's ad agencies couldn't find a way to make "food with integrity" a compelling sales proposition, Ells dumped them and brought marketing in-house. Now the company is winning industry awards, and building valuable customer loyalty, through campaigns such as The Scarecrow. The online video and game about farmers and fresh food has become a best seller on the App Store, downloaded nearly 700,000 times [and] has fueled Chipotle's growth. The company now has some 1,700 stores, up from 1,350 two years ago; revenue is $3.6 billion, up more than $1 billion over the same time; and Chipotle's market cap doubled to a whopping $21 billion.

Steve Ells and Chipotle are hardly alone in embracing what Ells calls a "loftier" vision for the enterprise. "...another renegade CEO declared... his frame for decision making was moral: "We do things because they're just and right." This emphasis on social goals over financial performance seems almost revolutionary—and yet the renegade is none other than Tim Cook of Apple, CEO of the most valuable company in the world.

[As for]... Generation Flux, [they are the] people best positioned to thrive in today's era of high-velocity change. Fluxers are defined not by their chronological age but by their willingness and ability to adapt, ...defining where business and culture are moving. ...Purpose is at the heart of their actions... [not] social service. ...Mission..allows them to filter the modern barrage of stimuli, to motivate and engage those around them, and to find new and innovative ways to solve the world's problems. ….Businesses that find and then live by their mission often discover that it becomes their greatest competitive advantage.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

Purpose and Generation Flux are central concepts to values centered, purpose driven and highly successful companies and more companies, who have this at their core as they grow, are finding success. Those who do not will not be able to change or adapt to it later. ~ D

A case study of change at Philips illustrates the importance of the “soft stuff.”

Pieter Nota: For [many] reasons, the [top] team was insecure and couldn’t understand why things were going so badly. The top-team survey we did in May 2011, in preparation for our first off-site meeting, exposed some of the challenges—...how misaligned we were on the direction of the business, the poor quality of our discussions, the lack of trust, the lack of confidence in our ability to implement strategy, and the perception that we were ineffective at making change happen.

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...everyone got to the point where they could decide whether they wanted to be in or not...a pivotal moment.

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The Quarterly: How and when did you go about starting to rebuild the team?

Pieter Nota: I...I think our first big off-site meeting—in May 2011, at Huizen, in the Netherlands—was significant. ...we put the issues on the table. Two things remain clearly etched in my memory.

One is a no-holds-barred conversation on team loyalty, which emphasized the importance of our values, our core purpose, and the essential notion of trust.

The second is the introduction of some critical new thinking on how to improve the quality of our operations and implementation capabilities.

...I knew that I did not have all my team members on board and that this needed to be addressed. Even after my predecessor had gone, some who had been in his very close circle were continuing to have conversations with him. During the opening of the off-site meeting, this topic had already come up. We ended up spending three hours talking about the past, clearing the air, and gaining a better understanding of each other. At the end, everyone got to the point where they could decide whether they wanted to be in or not. That was a pivotal moment.

Stay in touch with the monthly Best of the Best news, taken from Deb's 9 multi-gold award winning curation streams. Preview it here,via REVELN Tools.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

Asking "what's working" and "what's not" is where it began. This Phillips leader also knew how to communicate and prepare, including setting up an crucial off-site meeting to rebuild and renew the top leadership including a 'pivotal moment" of trust building and commitment among the top team's leader. This gave them thinking time and space, "slow is fast" to allow them to let go of their legacy leadership and embrace the new strategy and vision, or choose to be somewhere else.

The portraits here are of men and women in their 80s and 90s, rich in the rewards of substantial and celebrated careers… Why do they persist, the old masters? …The short answer: “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” ~ Dr. Samuel Johnson

Examples:

Edward O. Wilson, naturalist and author, 85

NYT: You are the world’s foremost expert on ants, and now you’re asking about the meaning of human existence and the future of humanity. Has growing older pushed you to these bigger questions?

EW: I couldn’t have asked these questions before. I was too engaged in the hands-on research, especially in the field.

NYT: So how has age contributed to your more recent books?

I think age contributed a great deal to [his] recent trilogy of books. First because I feel I have enough experience to join those who are addressing big questions. Second …I was astonished at how little this was being done. I’ve come to appreciate that we’re wrecking the planet… The public response …[has] been unacceptably weak.

Ginette Bedard, long-distance runner, 81, Howard Beach, Queens.

Bedard will run in her 12th consecutive New York City Marathon this year.

NYT: You ran your first marathon at age 69. How did you do?

GB: I came in second in my age group, I think 65 to 69, and the next year I came in first. And I think I was 72 when I beat the world record for my age group, 3:46 or :45.

Carl Reiner, actor, 92, Beverly Hills, Calif.

Reiner published his second memoir, ‘‘I Just Remembered,’’ this year.

NYT: Has the process of writing for you changed?

CR: It has not changed. I still only write from the gut, I can only write about what I know. The only thing I research is if I’m writing about someone I don’t know. Thank God for Google. Otherwise I go by the seat of my pants

Roy Haynes, jazz drummer and bandleader, 89, Long Island. Haynes’s latest album was ‘‘Roy-Alty,’’ released in 2011.

NYT: You travel a lot, and it sounds as if you have no intention of slowing down.

RH: I’ve been traveling since 1945. …drumming’s just a continuous way of life. And it’s still going on. I’ve been doing this longer than I’ve been doing anything else.

NYT: What keeps you going?

RH: You get to be this age, you think you know a little more about life. With my traveling around, it’s quite exciting, and I’m sure it keeps me young. A lot of the people I play with are much younger than me. Young enough to be my children or my grandchildren. People say I look young. The average person if they asked how old I was wouldn’t expect me to be the age I am.

NYT: But how do you maintain your stamina?

RH: I don’t know. If I knew, I’d just write a book on that and forget playing drums. I’d become richer.

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As always in REVELN ScoopIt news, click on the photo to see the full post.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

Learning from our elders, vibrant and accomplished, is a good way of also preparing for the future. It is notable that the arts are well represented here, and in that, art is life. ~ Deb

The crowdfunding model is now a mini-cottage industry, thanks to Kickstarter, and yes, he's been spoofed by 'South Park.'

Excerpts:

...When did the concept of crowdfunding first click for you?

In 2005. I had these artist and musician friends with day jobs that they hated, but they couldn’t afford to just do art or music. There’s a widespread assumption that creative things just magically happen, and they don’t. Creation requires funding.

....(order changed) Today, millions of people use the site each day, adding up to a daily average of $1 million in pledges (some 70,000 campaigns have launched on the site).

...Are there plans to grow the staff?

Actually, no. I think we’ll get to 100 people, but not much beyond that in the near future. Being a small company [means we are] light on costs, and I like the scrappiness of trying to accomplish a lot with a little. There’s far more shared ownership with a small team.

...Are you threatened by ...copycat competitors?

I’ve always known others would copy our idea, but to be honest, we’ve always been the strongest product. ....and for most of our measurements -- dollars pledged, site visitors, project supporters -- there’s a huge gulf between us and the rest of the field.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

FOR THE WIN: Spot on great ideas, carried to full implementation and sustained in good faith, with some bumps in the road. Overall good ideas, good will and smart business practices will win the day, says I. As an consultant, there's a lot to like about Kickstarter, including my favorite value in the work world, "choice." We have a lot that is industrial age about our still new, burgeoning information age. Fortunately, Kickstarter the concept, and the reality, is not one of them.

I've also included crowdfunding and crowdsourcing as a community building, ownership trend that field of Organization Development (OD), among others, is ignoring in a digital chapter on its way to publication for Wiley for Practicing OD, 2015 edition.

In the wake of the second round of layoffs at Ann Arbor-based ForeSee, another local tech company is trying to help connect those now without jobs with companies looking for talent.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

These are Dug Song, ‪#‎leadership‬ lessons for ‪#‎Michigan‬ and any business in the area of layoffs. Reaching out and helping the system of up and down business employment cycles, especially, as in the case of Duo Security, when your business is hiring when another is laying off, is simply good business smarts. The way Duo Security is doing it is 21st century smart. #HR #21stcentury #growth

ip McKinsey's recent research points to a small subset of leadership skills that closely correlates with leadership success, particularly among frontline leaders. McKinsey came up with a comprehensive list of 20 distinct leadership traits, surveyed 189,000 people in 81 diverse organizationsaround the world to assess how frequently certain kinds of leadership behavior are applied within their organizations. Finally, they divided the sample into organizations whose leadership performance was strong (the top quartile of leadership effectiveness as measured by McKinsey’s Organizational Health Index) and those that were weak (bottom quartile).

What McKinsey found was that leaders in organizations with high-quality leadership teams typically displayed 4 of the 20 possible types of behavior; these 4, indeed, explained 89 percent of the variance between strong and weak organizations in terms of leadership effectiveness (exhibit).

Four kinds of behavior account for 89 percent of leadership effectiveness.

Solving problems effectively. The process that precedes decision making is problem solving, when information is gathered, analyzed, and considered. This is deceptively difficult to get right, yet it is a key input into decision making for major issues (such as M&A) as well as daily ones (such as how to handle a team dispute).

Operating with a strong results orientation. Leadership is about not only developing and communicating a vision and setting objectives but also following through to achieve results. Leaders with a strong results orientation tend to emphasize the importance of efficiency and productivity and to prioritize the highest-value work.

Seeking different perspectives. ...monitors trends affecting organizations, grasps changes in the environment, encourages employees to contribute ideas that could improve performance, accurately differentiate between important and unimportant issues, and gives the appropriate weight to stakeholder concerns. Leaders who do well on this dimension typically base their decisions on sound analysis and avoid the many biases to which decisions are prone.

Supporting others. Leaders who are supportive understand and sense how other people feel. By showing authenticity and a sincere interest in those around them, they build trust and inspire and help colleagues to overcome challenges. They intervene in group work to promote organizational efficiency, allaying unwarranted fears about external threats and preventing the energy of employees from dissipating into internal conflict.

From McKinsey’s Organizational Health Index research: The ...presence, at all ...levels, of talented, high-potential leaders ...is essential to create something from nothing.

While most organizations use career opportunities to motivate employees, companies in this cluster use career opportunities as a leadership-development practice. Role modeling and real experience are more important than passing along sage lessons.

McKinsey offers insights on where to pivot the time you put into leadership development including the 4 behaviors as well as 4 recipes associated with sustained success. Want to create change and "something from nothing?"

Then read McKinsey's take (from the Index research) on the four "distinct underlying approach to managing, including core beliefs about value creation and what drives organizational success." ~ Deb

He made the stunning announcement on Tuesday during a press conference.

Blatter has been under fire since last week, when indictments for 14 people, including members of the FIFA executive committee, were handed out by the U.S. Department of Justice for charges of racketeering, money laundering, and bribery.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

Including the previous post on the need to step back and pivot FIFA into a new era, this provides fresh opportunity to fix what's been broken for a long time. The challenge is great, the rewards could also be great if successful change happens at all levels. ~ Deb

"The ignition-switch crisis is cementing G.M.'s status as one of the deadliest automotive safety issues in American history."

_____________________

GM's...internal investigation showed that dozens of engineers, lawyers and investigators had known about ignition problems for years but failed to fix them.

_____________________

The GM ignition switch has gained notoriety because the defect was essentially hidden for a decade until G.M. began recalling 2.6 million affected cars last year.

...G.M. set up the compensation fund last year after its internal investigation showed that dozens of engineers, lawyers and investigators inside the company had known about ignition problems for years but failed to fix them.

A sad, instructive cautionary tale from G.M. updated with the newest information as of May 2015. From another article from the New York Times in ongoing coverage, “G.M.'s decision-making, structure, process and corporate culture stood in the way of safety.” ~ D

While the overwhelming majority of the responses on social media and elsewhere were positive, there were also a number of people, [executives] who expressed doubts related to the nature of pay and compensation.

Excerpts:

Sandi Krakowski, an author and Facebook marketing expert, posted on Twitter: “His mind-set will hurt everyone in the end. He’s young. He has a good intent, but wrong method.”

Patrick R. Rogers, an associate professor of strategic management at the School of Business and Economics at North Carolina A&T State University, wrote in an email: “The sad thing is that Mr. Price probably thinks happy workers are productive workers. However, there’s just no evidence that this is true. So he’ll improve happiness, only in the short term, and will not improve productivity. Which doesn’t bode well for his long-term viability as a firm.”

Perhaps the most prominent attacker was Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio host, who labeled the move “pure, unadulterated socialism, which has never worked.”

Most critics were not as ideological as Mr. Limbaugh but were nevertheless put off by Mr. Price’s deviation from trusting in the market, both to set wages (his own as chief executive and that of his employees) and to maximize his own profits. Overpaying workers may make them lazy and is likely to inspire resentment among colleagues who once sat on the higher end of the pay divide, they warned.

During an interview with Mr. Price on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the co-host Mika Brzezinski noted that people would probably say “you’re a terrible manager.”

Another guest, Sam Stein, an editor at The Huffington Post, was simply flummoxed. “Are you crazy?” he asked.

Maybe, Mr. Price conceded.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

Originally I mentioned that this case would be a good test of Herzberg's theories about pay, satisfaction and productivity. I posted later that I stood corrected, when I heard he was taking a pay cut of 90% to help fund the salary increases.

On the one hand, he is a change leader because of the message he is sending about executive pay, and because of his boldness to be "crazy" and to experiment in this way. On the other hand, it will be a good test of the limits of pay, and the theories and research that show that happiness and productivity are not necessary in the same room together. Or perhaps they can be. Check out a sample of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's slides I captured at his University of Michigan presentation this month.

Jonsson, CEO & co-founder of Jumpstarter describes Flow as

a state of mind where you are immensely focused and get things done. It is those precious moments when you are productive and ecstatic at the same time.It is achieved by clearing the mind from the mind clutter. Mind clutter could be thoughts, feelings and impressions. Clearing it is achieved by actively working with accepting emotions, addressing problems when they arise and seeing things as they are.

”Flow-stoppers” are all those things that create mind clutter. It could be anything from deadlines to personal relationships to putting pressure on oneself to perform and do well.

Time will tell. He continues as a potential change leader, nonetheless for shaking things up. ~ Deb

As part of its biggest investment in worker training and pay ever, Walmart told The Associated Press that within the next six months it will give raises to about 500,000 workers, or nearly 40% of its 1.3 million U.S. employees.

Walmart follows other retailers that have boosted hourly pay recently, but because it's the nation's largest private employer, the impact of its move will be more closely watched.

...At the same time, competition for retail workers is becoming increasingly stiff. As shoppers get more mobile savvy, retailers are seeking sales staff that's more skilled at customer service. But in the improving economy, the most desirable retail workers feel more confident in hopping from job to job.

Wal-Mart's plans [include]:

[Raise] entry level wages to at least $9 an hour in April and to at least $10 an hour by February of next year. ...Sam's Club locations will offer a starting hourly wage of at least $9.50 or higher in all markets, and at least $10.50 by next year.

Raise the floor and ceiling of its pay range for each position in most stores. For example, the pay range for cashiers is $7.65 to $16. The new range will be $9.00 to $17.55.

Raise the starting wage for some department managers to at least $13 an hour by this summer and at least $15 an hour by early next year.

As for all Scoops, click on the photo or title to see the full article.

Stay in touch with the monthly Best of the Best news, taken from Deb's 9 award winning curation streams. Preview it here, via REVELN Tools.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

From the article, it sounds like Walmart, the organization that is so huge, it impacts the entire US economy, is open to advice from their advisers. Those include Ed Lazear, a Stanford University economics professor, who said, "It's positioning itself to be competitive." "This is a step in the right direction."

So they help their poor image and become more competitive, as the labor market rebounds. ~ Deb

Germany's policy of switching to clean energy looks like a failure on the surface, but it has succeeded in changing people's thinking for the future.

...the policy's results show how a determined government can eventually shake up complacent oligopolies and point their thinking in a different direction.

The German government's subsidies to wind, solar and other renewable energy producers have grown to 20 billion euros per year (almost $26 billion at the current exchange rate) since 1991, when Germany first started the financial support. With that massive amount of aid, Germany overshot by three percentage points the European Union's 1997 goal of producing 12 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2010. In the first quarter of 2014, Germany's electricity mix had a 27 percent renewable share.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

Cheap, polluted. Clean, expensive. It's not that simple, yet in some ways, it is. ~ Deb

Conscious capitalists focus on a higher purpose—to have a positive impact on the world, through the products and services they deliver and the value they create for their stakeholders. The four principles of conscious capitalism—purpose, stakeholder orientation, conscious leaders, and conscious cultures—are practiced in well-known and revered companies such as Whole Foods Markets, Patagonia, Tata Group, Toms Shoes, Medtronics, and TDIndustries. These companies have figured out how to be fierce competitors and generate superior financial performance while treasuring their employees and delighting their customers without destroying the planet.

Kenneth Mikkelsen has aided the perspective in this article by defining Higher Purpose as more than, making money, Stakeholder Orientation from a ecosystem perspective, as "healthy stakeholders lead to a healthy business system." He's added 2 more: Conscious Leadership who recognize the integral role of culture and purposefully cultivate Conscious Culture, the "values, principles, practices [that] connects the stakeholders to each other and to the purpose [of] the company." ~ D

Higher Purpose: Recognizing that every business has a purpose that includes, but is more than, making money. By focusing on its Higher Purpose, a business inspires, engages and energizes its stakeholders.

Stakeholder Orientation: Recognizing interdependent nature of life and the human foundations and business, a business needs to create value with and for its various stakeholders (customers, employees, vendors, investors, communities, etc.). Like the life forms in an ecosystem, healthy stakeholders lead to a healthy business system.

Conscious Leadership: Human social organizations are created and guided by leaders – people who see a path and inspire others to travel along the path. Conscious Leaders understand and embrace the Higher Purpose of business and focus on creating value for and harmonizing the interests of the business stakeholders. They recognize the integral role of culture and purposefully cultivate Conscious Culture.

Conscious Culture: This is the ethos – the values, principles, practices – underlying the social fabric of a business, which permeates the atmosphere of a business and connects the stakeholders to each other and to the purpose, people and processes that comprise the company.

I embrace the concept of conscious capitalism. The beginning for me is increased self-awareness amongst leaders and therefore the capacity to see other people and our planet in better ways than the majority do now

Both Walmart and Costco have reputations for operating stores with minimal staffing—an obvious cost-saving tactic—and WinCo also tries to maximize efficiency in terms of hires and employee hours. While Walmart doesn’t have a particularly good reputation in terms of hourly wages or an ability to keep workers for the long haul, Costco is known to pay workers well, provide good benefits, and, by no coincidence, have great customer service thanks to the fact that employees who stick around for years and obviously want to keep their jobs. Likewise, few WinCo employees complain about their gigs. The company is employee owned, each owner (worker) is entitled to a pension, and health benefits are provided to anyone working at least 24 hours per week.

Keep an eye on this company. Let's see if they can make make it work with expansion. As a "good business" company, it is encouraging if they can model sustainable livelihood for workers and including pensions and health benefits.

We needs more of these types of companies to turn the tide of increasing poverty in the USA. ~ Deb

#1, Pope Francis has electrified the church and attracted legions of non-Catholic admirers by energetically setting a new direction. He has refused to occupy the palatial papal apartments, has washed the feet of a female Muslim prisoner, is driven around Rome in a Ford Focus, and famously asked "Who am I to judge?" with regard to the church's view of gay members.

He created a group of eight cardinals to advise him on reform, which a church historian calls the "most important step in the history of the church for the past 10 centuries." ... Sgns of a "Francis effect" abound: In a poll in March, one in four Catholics said they'd increased their charitable giving to the poor this year. Of those, 77% said it was due in part to the Pope.

Others on the list, excerpted:

#2 Angela Merkel, 59, Chancellor, Germany, may be the most successful national leader in the world today. She is the leader of the European Union, which as a whole is the world's largest economy, and Merkel has held that position for almost nine years. She played the lead role in managing Europe's debt crisis, keeping the EU intact while setting even Greece on the road to recovery.

#3 Alan Mulally, 68, CEO, Ford Motor Co. Ford's miracle worker saved the company without resorting to bankruptcy or bailouts by doing what previous leaders had tried and failed to do: change Ford's risk-averse, reality-denying, CYA-based culture. After earning $7.2 billion of profit last year -- far more than General Motors GM -0.25% or Chrysler -- the company paid its 47,000 UAW workers a record $8,800 each in profit sharing.

Stay in touch with the monthly Best of the Best news, taken from Deb's 9 multi-gold award winning curation streams. Preview it here, via REVELN Tools.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

The full list of 50 is worth a review even though it came out this past March. Most of these change leaders will stand the test of time. As of November 2014, the #1 spot of Argentine Pope Frances, who exemplifies change leadership, with influence far beyond several billions of Catholics worldwide. Ex-Catholics, if it were a denomination, would be the third largest group, and yet his message carries further to so many more of the world's citizens.

My half Argentine heritage speaks to one thing I know of many Argentines, including Pope Frances ~ they are challengers.

I grew up watching Star Trek, ...believing t...we would all be using communicators, replicators, tricorders, and transporters. I was optimistic...

...I was disappointed. I grew up into a world filled with hunger, poverty, and disease—....a world .... in which people obsess over maximizing their share of the pie. There is a greater focus on building wealth than on bettering the world.

_____________________

...This period in human history is unique, because now entrepreneurs can do what only governments and big corporations could do before.

_____________________

No wonder so many MBA students want to join investment banks: it is the best way to reap big financial rewards and to get ahead. ...I’m an MBA myself, so I can be critical about MBAs. I too worked at an investment bank, ...I too used to obsess over building wealth, and didn’t believe I could really make a difference in the world.

...I am here to tell you that you have opportunities that I could not even have imagined when I was young. You can build the Star Trek future that we have dreamed about.

...This period in human history is unique, because now entrepreneurs can do what only governments and big corporations could do before. You are the space cadets with the opportunities to make amazing things happen.

_____________________

We need people who care about enriching humanity rather than just themselves.

_____________________

....Whatever you do, don’t take a mindless, meaningless job with a big company just because they offer you a big salary. Try to be somewhere where you can constantly redefine yourself and keep learning. That is what it is going to be about: constant learning and reinvention.

The future is going to be what we make it. It can be the Star Trek utopia or a Mad Max wreck, a creative playground or an Orwellian nightmare. That is why we need people with good values and ethics leading the way. We need people who care about enriching humanity rather than just themselves.

Deb Nystrom, REVELN's insight:

This gem of a commencement address is well worth a slow, careful reading. Vivek Wadhwa delivered this address this year at Hult International Business School. It is informative to us all, not just his audience this past summer at the school formerly known as the Arthur D. Little School of Management. Click on the photo or title to review the well-researched, technology savvy, compassionate and practical view of what's coming, affecting our families, including changes in livelihood. I like how the author encourages us to choose other options than just corporate jobs for the big bucks.

Who is he?

His bio, from his website is as follows:

Vivek Wadhwa is a Fellow at Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Stanford University; Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at the Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University; and Distinguished Fellow at Singularity University. He is author of “The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent”—which was named by The Economist as a Book of the Year of 2012, and ” Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology”—which documents the struggles and triumphs of women. He was named by Foreign Policy Magazine as Top 100 Global Thinker in 2012. In 2013, TIME Magazine listed him as one of The 40 Most Influential Minds in Tech.

I've shared this gem of a commencement address by Vivek Wadhwa on Change Leadership Watch as well as here. He delivered this address at Hult International Business School. It is informative to us all, not just his audience this past summer at the school formerly known as the Arthur D. Little School of Management. Click on the photo or title to review the well-researched, technology savvy, compassionate and practical view of what's coming, affecting our families, including changes in livelihood. I like how the author encourages us to choose other options than just corporate jobs for the big bucks.

Who is he? His bio, from his website is as follows:

Vivek Wadhwa is a Fellow at Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Stanford University; Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at the Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University; and Distinguished Fellow at Singularity University. He is author of “The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent”—which was named by The Economist as a Book of the Year of 2012, and ” Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology”—which documents the struggles and triumphs of women. He was named by Foreign Policy Magazine as Top 100 Global Thinker in 2012. In 2013, TIME Magazine listed him as one of The 40 Most Influential Minds in Tech.

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